Massimo Ciavolella - Böcker

Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso is one of the masterpieces of the Renaissance, a work which, many argue, signalled the apogee of Renaissance fancy on the precipice of irony and decline. This collection of essays brings together twelve noted Italian and American scholars to provide a complete picture of Ariosto and all his works, covering topics such as historical criticism relating to Ariosto's place and time; philological investigations into the varying literary styles of the author, especially outside of the Furioso; Ariosto's extrinsic relationships with other literary traditions; and formal and thematic excavations of the immanent aesthetics of the Furioso.Each essayist acknowledges the fact that Ariosto's creations are charged with allusions and allegiances variously inviting recognition or demanding the status of record. This reading of his works reveals that Ariosto was not a writer who believed, as it was previously thought, that literature is something escapist or fantastic in nature, but one who, in writing and re-writing his works, tried to re-interpret literary tradition while incorporating the new literary instruments that were available to him at the time: Ariosto's literary production is an integration of tradition and invention. This new reading of his work will be essential to any Italianist's library.

Ludovico Ariosto, best known for his 1516 epic poem Orlando furioso, was one of the great writers of the Italian Renaissance. In this collection, Dennis Looney assembles a diverse compendium of Ariosto's prose, including his 214 Letters and a satirical piece, Herbal Doctor.Ariosto's correspondence paints a detailed portrait of the world he lived and wrote in. While some letters illuminate his day-to-day life, including his work as a provincial commissioner for the ruling Este family of Ferrara, others shed light on the composition and production of his poems and plays, allowing a glimpse of the man in his creative workshop. Herbal Doctor, a parody of humanism in general and neoplatonic philosophy in particular, may mark a defense of Ariosto's decision to turn away from the philological world of his contemporaries in order to pursue a different kind of learning.Looney's elegant, careful translation provides us with the first extensive selection of Ariosto's prose works in English, and enriches our understanding of one of Italy's most important Renaissance writers.

Exploring the fascinating cross-cultural influences between Jews and Christians in Italy from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, Acculturation and Its Discontents assembles essays by leading historians, literary scholars, and musicologists to present a well-rounded history of Italian Jewry.The contributors offer rich portraits of the many vibrant forms of cultural and artistic expression that Italian Jews contributed to, but this volume also pays close attention to the ways in which Italian Jews - both freely and under pressure - creatively adapted to the social, cultural, and legal norms of the surrounding society. Tracing both the triumphs and tragedies of Jewish communities within Italy over a broad span of time, Acculturation and Its Discontents challenges conventional assumptions about assimilation and state intervention and, in the process, charts the complex process of cultural exchange that left such a distinctive imprint not only on Italian Jewry, but also on Italian society itself.This collection of rigorous and thought-provoking essays makes a major contribution to both the history of Italian culture and the cultural influence and significance of European Jews.

The cultural forms often referred to as ‘baroque’ are the most spectacular expressions of early modern Europe’s effort to mediate between knowledge and power at a time when political authority was being centralized, the authority of religion undermined by the division of Christianity, and science and poetry were seen increasingly as rival forms of intellectual authority. Culture and Authority in the Baroque explores the baroque across a wide range of disciplines, from poetics to politics, to the rituals of musical, dramatic, and religious performance.The essays in this collection span what has been called the ‘baroque crescent’ stretching from Spain through Italy to Russia, but they also bring Shakespeare and English cosmological poetry into productive dialogue with continental Europe in the reinterpretation of baroque world-views. The editors, Massimo Ciavolella and Patrick Coleman, along with a group of eminent scholars from across the disciplinary and geographic spectrum, investigate baroque modes of persuasion with careful attention to the complexity of particular cultural phenomena and their political and aesthetic implications. This collection redefines the way the baroque will be understood.

Medical Humanities may be broadly conceptualized as a discipline wherein medicine and its specialties intersect with those of the humanities and social sciences. As such it is a hybrid area of study where the impact of disease and healing science on culture is assessed and expressed in the particular language of the disciplines concerned with the human experience. However, as much as at first sight this definition appears to be clear, it does not reflect how the interaction of medicine with the humanities has evolved to become a separate field of study. In this publication we have explored, through the analysis of a group of selected multidisciplinary essays, the dynamics of this process. The essays predominantly address the interaction of literature, philosophy, art, art history, ethics, and education with medicine and its specialties from the classical period to the present. Particular attention has been given to the Medieval, Early Modern, and Enlightenment periods. To avoid a rigid compartmentalization of the book based on individual fields of study we opted for a fluid division into multidisciplinary sections, reflective of the complex interactions of the included works with medicine.

The essays examine how the study of facial features or expressions as indicative of character or ethnicity, has evolved from the crossroad of magic, religion and primitive medicine to present-day cultural concern for wellness and beauty. In this context, the discoveries of cranio-facial neurophysiology and psychology and the practice of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery have a centuries-old relationship with physiognomy. As the study of outward appearances evolved from its classical roots and self-representations through 18th- and 19th-century adaptations in fiction and travelogues, it gradually became a scientific discipline. Along the way, physiognomy was associated with phrenology and craniology and promoted eugenic policies. Tainted with racial bigotry and biological determinism, it was trapped within questions of delinquency, monstrosity and posthumanism. Throughout its history, physiognomy played both positive and negative roles in the evolution of significant aspects of the socio-cultural order in the West that merit update and in-depth study. The contributions follow a chronological and intertwining sequence to encompass physiognomic expressions in art, literature, spirituality, science, philosophy and cultural studies.

Giraldi, in his trend-setting tragedy, Orbecche, first produced in 1541, sought to create a stage-worthy play while honouring the conventions of Seneca and well as the principles of Aristotle and Horace. Yet he found himself defending his choices in his Discorso through novel interpretations of these authorities to accommodate the needs of “modern” audiences. He modified the medieval inclination to concentrate solely upon the moralizing fall of tyrants through Fortuna's dark forces by introducing a victimized heroine seeking her own domestic tranquillity in a secret marriage, thereby drawing the wrath of a tyrant to express his rage upon his own daughter. Hence, the play becomes a domestic tragedy that exchanges political horrors for household violence. In the process, Giraldi considers his options concerning the character of his heroine and the ambiguity of her choices, while preferring a more intimate employment of the chorus, and a less ornamented rhetorical style. Even so, his play falls short of the increased action on stage promised in his Discorso, still relying on language in the place of visible action, the legacy of the Senecan style.  Nevertheless, the play becomes a model for all such stage worthy revenge tragedy in the Renaissance, as well as a workshop for dispute among academicians. The Introduction exposes in brief these many historical impingements upon Giraldi from Seneca’s practices, Aristotle's descriptive “prescriptions,” and Horace’s sense of moral utility to the needs of the court audiences in Ferrara for which the play was written.Meanwhile, as a theatrical experience, despite these tick-box conventions, Giraldi builds characters we come to care about, encourages suspense through their moral dilemmas and, in the end, reveals a generic contest between a chieftain father ready to barter his daughter in a marriage of political convenience, and a daughter determined to exercise her right to choose for love—a combat arguably embedded in the genes and as “archetypal” as any theme can be.

The first volume of essays in English on one of the most renowned contemporary Italian Philosophers.Remo Bodei (1938–2019) was one of Italy's most influential philosophers of the past half-century. His intellectual influence was wide-reaching as he guided the search for rational explanations of seemingly irrational phenomena and the philosophical underpinnings of poetry. Diverse both in their disciplinary approach and theoretical style, yet following a logical and coherent progression, the essays within Geometries of Experience begin with an exploration of Bodei's methodology followed by an analysis of his interest in the crisis of subjectivity in modern culture; his engagement with Spinoza, especially in his work Geometria delle passioni; his treatment of the body, framed as a "materialistic spirituality"; and his engagement with the relationship between philosophy and poetry. Overall, the book provides a rich and nuanced view of Bodei's intellectual legacy, demonstrating his distinctive approach to philosophy and literature.